Re: Urgent call for players to start playing BtA and JAD!

Wait, 2.22 isn't out yet? Which - what - the one with the beta testers, that was, what, 2.21?

Both of them are "the one with the beta testers" at least I'd assume so. 2.21 is a very obvious riff on Neon Genesis Evangelion, showing tester 3 in the opening and detailing testers 4-8 in the main campaign. So it would be reasonable to assume that 2.22 would deal with testers 8-12. Following the Evangelion theme tester 13 would probably be Epsilon 1 and 14 would be the whole Freespace playerbase(as we see it), I guess?

2.21 was recently re-released with sexy character animations and VN sequences that play from the journal instead of boring old text. It's just so full of spunk and I wouldn't say it "killed" 2.22 hype because it still showcases a lot of really cool small things that will be used in 2.22.

Though JAD being JAD 2.22 could be something entirely different and completely unrelated.

Re: Urgent call for players to start playing BtA and JAD!

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

AKA [`_`]Inferno: It's the I in Inferno / It's the beam spam delight / Risin' up to a shock jump arrivaaaaaalBetween The Ashes: Look just a really cool and neat thing, OK?The Last Stand: A very episodic capship command mini-campaignDimesional Eclipse: An experiment gone horribly right Breakthrough: A pretty standard but not really capship command mission

Re: Urgent call for players to start playing BtA and JAD!

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

Re: Urgent call for players to start playing BtA and JAD!

I'm already discussing with Spoon how to get WoD a bigger audience elsewhere. I sure neither of us mind suggestions but given the reasons why Spoon started this thread, I'm sure that we'd both prefer to keep the subject of this thread on BtA and JAD.

Re: Urgent call for players to start playing BtA and JAD!

It applies to BtA as well, like Battuta said it would be a lot easier to get people playing this stuff as "a self-contained single-player space sim with excellent mission design" rather than "a good Freespace 2 mod".

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

Re: Urgent call for players to start playing BtA and JAD!

If Diaspora and TBP can get away with it then BtA probably can too. As long as you don't put Freespace in the name. Using retail assets would probably also fly under the radar since FS2 is 17 years old now and pretty much nobody should care about some nerd making a free game with that IP.

Other projects:Out of the Shadow: Nova Safiya Edition (Remake of the Out of the Shadow campaign, in development)

If you want to know, what my nickname means, -chen is a german diminutive term, so you can translate Novachen as something like Little Nova or Novalet.Even my original meaning of this name is more like "Sweet pretty deadly (Super)Nova" .

Re: Urgent call for players to start playing BtA and JAD!

Getting Freespace 2 isn't the only problem. The other problem is installing the mods. The installer generally makes it pretty easy but the default configuration wants to dump 60 gigs worth of old mods on you and you have pretty much no idea what's good and what isn't without further research.

If you just had a separate full download for BtA anyone who discovered it could just download 1 package and play it. Pack it up with all the files you need and a FSO executable, install with with a simple .msi that can create a desktop shortcut to a wxlauncher set up for whatever you just downloaded. As simple as it can possibly be.

It's possible that a lot of people are getting turned away because installing mods and getting the right executable takes a bit of effort and research.

And seriously Cool spacesim name here[download and play now] is a lot more attractive than Cool spacesim name here[you have to buy and download this 18 year old game from somewhere else then mod it using an installer you've never heard of]. Having to go through even a few extra steps takes more dedication than just lazily clicking 1 download button.

Re: Urgent call for players to start playing BtA and JAD!

I had never the feeling, that the standalone release of the games helped them very much in terms of activity.

Promotion is much more important in my opinion.If you have a well-documented installation guide like we have here or in foreign-language commuties or even people around, that would help in any questions, it does not really matter if a release is a mod or a standalone.The bigger problem in running freespace was not the installation of mods, that is quite easy in comparsion to many other and more successful games. For me it was always the unlimited number of options, you have in the launcher. Without any guide any new player does not have an idea what to select. It does not matter if you have a standalone or a mod. The problem is the same.

But i think that promotion in general is much more important, because i am not sure if most of you here here knows, that there is a complete Starlancer Standalone Total Conversion based upon Freespace's engine out there, even for dreamcast, for nearly two years, for example. But without any promotion, you will not get any new players here.

So, spread the word . Create and updates forum threads in your gaming communites and in the GOG and Steam forums, where you can buy this games, regulary. Try to write Press releases. like every other publisher and developer do, even the team for Nehrim and a few others community teams did that, and send it to gaming websites to appear on them or write the news yourself, if your favorite magazine support that.That is the thing that will really help.

Other projects:Out of the Shadow: Nova Safiya Edition (Remake of the Out of the Shadow campaign, in development)

If you want to know, what my nickname means, -chen is a german diminutive term, so you can translate Novachen as something like Little Nova or Novalet.Even my original meaning of this name is more like "Sweet pretty deadly (Super)Nova" .

Re: Urgent call for players to start playing BtA and JAD!

But i think that promotion in general is much more important, because i am not sure if most of you here here knows, that there is a complete Starlancer Standalone Total Conversion based upon Freespace's engine out there, even for dreamcast, for nearly two years, for example.

Re: Urgent call for players to start playing BtA and JAD!

I had never the feeling, that the standalone release of the games helped them very much in terms of activity.

Promotion is much more important in my opinion.

I don't see this as an either-or, Freespace mods need both better promotion and a quick, self-contained installation package to succeed. Because we probably can't get away with repackaging FS2, the way to go with the latter is definitely more standalones.

One of the biggest obstacles that kept me from getting into Freespace was the fact that I had to buy an ancient game that didn't even run on my OS just so I could totally replace it with an open-source engine and fan mods. The only reason I'm here today is that I figured out how to use torrents.

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

Re: Urgent call for players to start playing BtA and JAD!

My original plan for the launcher was that it would control the downloading and installation of mods. So all you'd have to install once you had FS2 was the launcher. Then once you ran it, it would (Steam-like) control everything from one single point. It would also check for updates and help keep your FS2_Open install up to date by downloading newer releases of mods and executables.

For some reason I've never fully understood the launcher team went off and did their own thing and Goober decided to write the installer in Java.